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>> Well good evening everyone, it's very nice to be here this evening in this lovely venue. My name is Maxine McKew, I'm your host for this, the third lecture in this ANZAC series. Let me first of all acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Wiradjuri people, and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Well tonight's topic, indigenous ANZACS, considers a history that, until quite recently, received scant attention. But in a commemorative year that is looking at the players and the themes of the Great War, the good news is that more information is now available, and more is being sought by researchers about the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who have served in all wars going back to the Boer War. It's a subject that has most recently inspired our artists, from Wesley Enoch's play Black Diggers, to Tony Albert's sculpture in Sydney's Hyde Park which is dedicated to all Aboriginal men and women who have served in the Australian Defence Forces. And of course right next door, Brooke Andrew, with us here tonight, has added his commentary with his thought-provoking exhibition Sanctuary, which invites reflection on displacement and resettlement as a result of all wars and conflicts. Those of you who have seen the exhibition, and if you haven't I invite you to do so over the next little while, you will have seen, or will see, a most arresting and dramatic centrepiece of this exhibition, and I know Vincent and Brook will refer to it, it's a sarcophagus which contains an Aboriginal breastplate, a marker of the devastating frontier wars. Now, given our discussion tonight, given that bloody history, many of us must wonder at the 400 Aboriginal men who volunteered, from 1914 on, to enlist to fight in a war for Empire. Many were at first rejected on the grounds of race, others slipped through the net, and we can only wonder today why they did it. After the slaughter at Gallipoli, and the continuing disaster of the stalemate on the Western Front, Australian recruiters became increasingly colorblind, and regulations were amended to allow half-castes into the AIF. The accounts we have suggest that there was a rough equality among the troops, but that did not spill over into the post-war years. A decade after the cessation of hostilities in Europe, as Australia turned inward in many cases, conditions for Aboriginal people across the states were worse than they were at the birth of the Commonwealth. Now our guests this evening will, from different perspectives, look at the events of 100 years ago, and then consider their resonance today. Just before I introduce our guests I want to point out as well that this lecture series also recalls similar events from a century ago, when professors from Australia's six universities held a series of public lectures in an effort to explain the complexities of the conflict, and Dr. James Waghorne, hear from the Northern University's History Unit, has been the force behind this series, and continues to uncover really some fascinating detail about this. So to our guests, Brook Andrew, born in Sydney, his kinship is with the Wiradjuri people, and as I say, his exhibition, Sanctuary, will be central to our discussion this evening. Sanctuary was curated by Dr. Vincent Alessi, joining us as well, in his role as the curatorial manager of the Potter Museum of Art. Now, with us as well, we are hoping, and Melbourne traffic permitting, will be Professor Marcia Langton, she is terribly apologetic, she has been stuck in Canberra because of a delayed flight, but, as far as I know she's landed and she is winging her way here. So we've all got to sort of send out positive vibes haven't we, to get her here for our discussion but, Professor Marcia Langton of course is one of our best known public intellectuals, and a wonderful presence at this university in the School of Population and Global Health. But our format this evening is to hear from our guests and then to have a bit of a conversation here on the stage, but then it's to open up to the audience for your questions on this topic. So would you please welcome first of all Vincent Alessi to set the scene for us about the exhibition Sanctuary. Thanks Vincent.
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>> On the day of the first ever ANZAC commemoration in 1916, the New South Wales Education Director, Peter Board, clearly articulated the sacrifice made by Australian soldiers for an Imperial cause. At Gallipoli, he declared, history, and Australia's history, were fused and fused at white heat. Never again can the history of this continent of ours stand detached from the world history. Its voice must be heard in the counsels of the Empire, because its men and its women have fought and died in an Empire struggle. Almost 100 years after the first ANZAC Day service, ANZAC Day has morphed from one that acknowledged the sacrifice made by Australians in the service of the British Empire, to one with a focus on defending democracy and freedom, and the maturing of a nation state. ANZAC Day has now become Australia's national day. The word digger, a colloquial term for any Australian serviceman in action, and the landing and fighting at Gallipoli, viewed as the birth of the nation. Politicians attend dawn services all around the country, the Prime Minister holds pride of place at ANZAC Cove every anniversary, and wreaths are laid at memorials all around the world whenever a parliamentarian is overseas on coinciding official duties. Our Defence Forces are sacrosanct, and any criticism of their behaviour, or the operations in which they are employed, such as the turning back of refugee boats, is seen as unpatriotic, and even worse, un-Australian. As Australia commemorates the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli, and governments and institutions across the country invest time and resources to mark the event, questions of what and how we remember, and an acknowledgement of the forgotten stories and unintended consequences of war, is timely and necessary. This is not to dismiss or denigrate the distinguished service that many men and women have given to their country. Rather, it is about insuring that the ANZAC narrative, passed down through many generations over the last century, remains honest and truthful, and that it does not become a means of celebration, or a cornerstone of nation building and patriotism. The people who flock to ANZAC Cove annually do so understanding the history and the facts that saw over 400,000 Australian men leave this country to fight for an Imperial Army, that war has a human element and is not about glory, and that many stories have been lost as the dominant narrative and Australia has centred on the birth of the nation. When the Ian Potter Museum of Art first approached Brook Andrew to work on an exhibition in response to the ANZAC centenary, it was with the intention of investigating and bringing to light the role of indigenous servicemen and women, particularly those who fought in the two World Wars. After initial conversation it was agreed that the exhibition should be much broader, that it should investigate 100 years of conflict, and more importantly that it should interrogate the dominant narrative, which is now the cornerstone of our understanding of the ANZAC story. Within this context it was possible to address the role of indigenous servicemen and women, but also it allowed for a boarder investigation of the conflicts enacted on Australian soil since the arrival of the first fleet. Brook's exhibition Sanctuary, Tombs of the Outcasts, creates a space for the audience to mediate, to meditate on their own knowledge and war-related experiences, in order to contemplate and interrogate the way we think about ANZAC Day, and war more generally. It asks us to consider the folly of war, as well as the repercussions of conflict, both in Australia and internationally. It brings to light parts of history which have been pushed to the recesses, such as the role of indigenous servicemen and women, and debunks the myth that Australia has never seen war on its own land, by drawing attention to the frontier wars. It also celebrates the unintended consequences of conflict, in particular Australia's role as a sanctuary for those fleeing war zones, be that, the Jewish diaspora that fled during the two World Wars, or more recently people fleeing Africa, parts of the Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The ascension of ANZAC Day to our national day, is in part a reaction to the 1988 bicentenary celebrations of the arrival of the first fleet at Botany Bay, which for many, in particular indigenous Australians, represents invasion. Australian Day no longer unites and represents all citizens. As Mark McKenna points out and I quote, after a decade of cultural and political division over 26th of January, here at last was a day that could be shaped in a true source of national communion. The blood spilt in the frontier wars, the taking of Aboriginal land without consent or compensation, the physical and cultural decline of Aboriginal communities, and the political demands of Aboriginal activists, none of these need haunt or spoil the commemoration of ANZAC Day. End of quote. Within this context, the repositioning of ANZAC Day, as a replacement for Australia Day, assisted the perpetuation of the readily-accepted narrative that Australian lands have never been sites of conflict.
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This of course is not true. The early frontier wars between Aborigines and settlers saw the deaths of thousands of people, including large-scale massacres committed against original inhabitants of these lands. Furthermore, the elevation of ANZAC Day to the most important day on the national calendar, has enabled politicians to push certain ideological agendas. For former Prime Minister Paul Keating, it was to redirect the Australian gaze towards Asia, by focussing on Australia's war efforts in the South Pacific, in particular the brutality experienced by servicemen on the Kokoda Trail. For Prime Minister John Howard, it was an opportunity to realign Australia more closely with Britain and the Commonwealth, and later to justify Australia's involvement in the war against terror, by invoking a belief that Australia had, since the Great War, been a defender of liberty and democracy. While this move towards a conservative, deeply politicised and patriotic greeting of ANZAC Day has served politicians well, it has failed to elicit the complexity of conflict. Moreover it has created a monotone narrative which does not allow for different stories and voices. Brook's exhibition addresses this narrowly-defined narrative, including the history of the frontier wars, and the role of indigenous servicemen and women. Sitting within a vitrine of objects, photographs, books and maps, is Harry Gordon's 1965 publication, The Embarrassing Australian: The Story of an Aboriginal Warrior, a tribute to Lieutenant Reginald Saunders who served in the Australian Defence Forces in World War II, and then in the Korean War. Saunders was the first indigenous Australian to be commissioned as an Officer in the Australian Army, serving as a Lieutenant in charge of a platoon of 30 soldiers in World War II, and in later life was awarded an MBE for both his community work, and his leadership role within the Office of Aboriginal Affairs.
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An installation of objects from Brook's archive and studio titled The Memory Archive, includes a photographic reproduction after a glass lantern slide, of an indigenous police officer on horseback, an image that recounts the employment of indigenous people to assist with tracking, and in some cases for the deployment to areas which saw clashes between settlers and indigenous communities. Placed on the floor to its left are two records. One, a recording made by Australian anthropologist, Professor Aldophus Peter Elkin, titled Ardent Land Volume II: Authentic Aboriginal Songs and Dances, an acknowledgement of the noble savage view held by many even into the mid-20th century. In a separate gallery stands a sculptural vitrine in solitude, a place of sanctuary and contemplation, a gothic timber and glass structure that looks like a cathedral-inspired sarcophagus, encases a brass breastplate, an object bestowed upon the indigenous population by their new masters, the expanding settlers' society. While this work speaks more broadly about those lost in war, it resonates in its acknowledgement of the thousands of indigenous lives lost in Australia's own conflicts, many of which took place before the landing at Gallipoli. It also simultaneously recognises the contributions of indigenous men and women in Australians Defence Forces, including the thousands who served in World War, in both World Wars. Andrew's memorial and acknowledgement of indigenous stories poses the question, as Maxine has already alluded to, as to why men would participate in wars for a country that did not accept them as citizens. And that's just a close-up of the breastplate of King Charlie, which I believe Brook is going to talk a bit more about. In 1991, a year after Prime Minster Bob Hawk attended the dawn service at ANZAC Cove, Richard Niall surmised the importance of ANZAC Day, and also the need to continue to have challenged the quickly-growing myth. And I quote, it is little wonder that ANZAC mythologies are so revered in Australia, but like peace and war, the ANZAC myth is an invention over which we all have some sway. We Australians see in our ANZAC that which we wish to see, we can change our arguments, our points of view and interpretations, just as we can alter our perceptions of ourselves, and our relations in the world, but we cannot change the events in which the ANZACS went into battle. Nor is it possible to disregard the voracity with which we have in the past held onto the mythologies of Gallipoli. These ought to tell us something about ourselves, the Australians as people, but there are no single or definitive answers, there are only clusters of meaning. In either respect, there must surely be lessons. End of quote. Sanctuary: Tombs of the Outcast, is not an orthodox response to the ANZAC centenary. However, it is timely, and offers the clusters of meaning to which Niall refers. While services, exhibitions, films and publications commemorating centenary are of immense importance to the nation and individuals, there should always be room for critique as well as reflection. More importantly, there must be space to re-embrace factual history, and to allow discussions about the conflicts which happened on our land. Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Vincent thank you very much for leading off for us, and would you please now welcome Brook Andrew.
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>> Hi everyone. I mean maybe I'll just thank you Maxine for the introduction and hopefully Marcia will walk in the door and thank you Vince. Thank you all for coming. It's a really complex kind of issue to be approached to create a work specially about indigenous ANZACS, because of course we know that the story is, it's multiple, we have different experiences, you know it's only now that we're scratching the surface of these histories, and in many ways, when I was approached I felt like it was so much more than that narrative. And I kind of questioned who is this narrative for. And even though that I think that this visibility around these stories are of course incredibly important, especially for my mother's family, I often think well who are they really important for. Are they important for a dominant narrative, or are they important for my mother's family's narrative? And so this is when I, you know, went back to Vincent and kind of said well hang on, no this is a much broader story, it's, when you know other indigenous people or share, you know, our stories, they're often stories that, about mission life, or reserves or the frontier wars, or the trauma that still exists in our families, not only, you know, with regards to alcohol abuse or verbal abuse or sexual abuse etcetera. And I suppose the reason why I'm saying this is that, because we talk about trauma, post-traumatic, you know, stress syndromes when it comes to conflict zones, there's kind of, these stresses are, you know, are still within our families in regards to those conflict zones, and they also extend into imagery. So the visibility of photographs, so I work a lot with my own research with ethnographic photographs and the kind of, the visibility of that, and the complexity of that and how I work with communities and my own family about what we can and can't show and what that unearths. And so when, you know, I spoke to my grandmother, my late grandmother about these ethnographic photographs from Charles Carey, you know around, you know, New South Wales, rotary country, of these people who are unknown people, she'd never seen these before, and quite, matter of fact I think a lot of Australians hadn't seen them before. So it was really, you know, until artists started using them and Aboriginal started using them, so what I'm kind of trying to do here is broaden the kind of narrative here, which is not just a dominant narrative that we know, that comes from a specific colonial perspective, because that's the reality of where we are. And this isn't about guilt either, I mean I think that, you know, this is about a story that we all share. So, how do I deal with that narrative, and Vincent and other people know that its not about that, it's about that. And, so it took me to this. And it's an authentic breastplate, and they're very difficult to get hold of, it just landed in my lap so to speak, they're mainly, these breastplates are in national museums, this specific one was offered to the National Museum in Canberra, and they didn't get back within the week and so they offered it to me because of the connexions I have with certain antiquity and bookstores know that I have an archive. Excuse me. And I collect, you know, these kind of objects. And so this, so, you know, I let Vincent know that there's this object, and when we first started talking about it, this was really the beginning, you know this is the frontier wars, this is Snow River, 1866, this is when people were, you know were basically being decimated by the frontier wars and they were being moved onto missions and reserves. So there's a huge shift in cultural life for Aboriginal people in Victoria, and of course in other parts of New South Wales, during this time.
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And so of course I needed to put this somewhere and it ended up being, I suppose in a place that people often talk about the Unknown, or the Unnamed Solider. So these things about unknown or unnamed people don't only happy on one side they happen to all of us, it's humanity. And so in some ways this is what I really wanted to bring together. This work here is made from a slab of about 150 year old Red Gum timber, one piece from Victoria, it's got burnt or carbonised legs on it which go to a point at the bottom, it kind of represents the roots of trees kind of going down but if it touch it it marks you, with its carbonised, kind of charcoaled surface. And there is a timber in there which is not from Australia and that is Ebony so you'll see that it has, just on the inside has like the little black squares and they're next to Victorian Ash, so it's Victorian Ash and Ebony. The reason why I put these international moments in a lot of my practice and my work, my archives etcetera, is because Australia has connexions to other places, we all know that, in this narrative it's England, New Zealand, etcetera, and the First World War, but in my narrative I'm inserting in this, it's also looking at colonialism in Africa, in the kind of, you know the acquisition of land and timber, Ebony, you know, anyway it goes on, Sapele timber from Africa was used of course in Danish furniture, etcetera. So the placement I suppose of this breastplate in this, you know Maxine talked about it as a sarcophagus, I really do see it as like a pavilion. In some ways like my work, if you know my work Jumping Castle War Memorial, it's a large kids' jumping castle, but in actual fact it's my version of a war memorial. And it's been shown in different places around the world, now it's in Europe travelling, and people always ask me if they can jump on it, you know, because it's this active thing, and I suppose in some ways my work is about that, it's about, you have to think about it. You know we're not going to just, we don't, I think there's a narrative that we're all supposed to know. And even when Vincent asked me to be in this, to make this show, it's like, I don't know if I know that narrative. The specific narrative to do with, you know the First World War, I mean, you know my family were on missions on that side and on the other side I think they were still coming over some of them. And so, my grandfather was in involved, my father's father was involved in the Second World War, but he went AWOL because he didn't want to fight in the war, and then he was put in gaol, but we didn't know that until he died. So I see him as a resistance person, I don't see him as an eloper or, you know, somebody who abandoned his country. So I think we all have our own narratives and stories. The thing about the pavilion for me is I suppose an experiment, I think as an artist we're experimenting with the stories of our society, and we're given these different narratives, and what do they mean to us, and so this work means many things, it's a sarcophagus, it's the pavilion, it's the, a religious place, you might want to call it a church, it's a viewing space, and I think that the point of Sanctuary: Tombs of the Outcasts, is that it is full of archive materials that some aspects you might interpret differently to your friend or to your partner or your family member. You have different stories, we all bring our own stories here. And so this is something that I really wanted to, to kind of, to negotiate, I didn't want it to be, this is the story of the narrative. And Vince had talked about the native policeman, you may know about native policeman, they were also active on the frontier, and these native policemen also hunted down or tracked down other Aboriginal people because of course, like having a joke with Vincent about Italy, I mean not all Italians like each other, you know it's the same thing. [Laughter] And it's these kind of myths, you know if we kind of bust those, you know burst those myths of romanticism and all of that sort of stuff we, you know we can have different political affiliations, we don't have to like someone else, you know we don't share the same histories, we don't have the same language, etcetera. But of course we have to become unified under this nation. So the native policeman was really important, that glass lantern slide is part of my collection, the extensive research I've done overseas in archives as well as within Australia, this kind of representation I haven't come across very often, it was used as a government education lantern slide. So of course it would have been, you know, here we go, the Aborigines are doing their job, click, next slide, they're doing their job.
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[ Silence ]
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I won't talk too much about this because Vincent mentioned it and I know Marcia's going to talk about the importance of this. I did want to also, alongside the narrative of indigenous servicemen and women serving within the Armed Forces, I can't help not but reflect on the impact on native animals as well. That for me is really important. The way in which still today Aboriginal communities are negotiating, you know, certain fishery waters, etcetera, to have access to, which is of course linked into, you know, land management and access to land, land rights, I mean these are all land issues, land, land, land, we're talking about histories of land and so, Gallipoli, the Vietnam War, these are all issues of war as well. And so I suppose it's those subtle, you know, touches that I also wanted to, you know, maybe evoke. This is a skull of a quall, we probably know the quall, I'm pretty sure it's extinct in New South Wales now. In Victoria I think it's incredibly endangered.
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There's something I did want to also talk about which is kind of getting off the extreme narrative, but I think that connects and makes us all complicit in a world view of human conflict. And the kind of narratives that we weave from our own ancestors into one which is the complexity of Australia is that you'll see a mask here within the sculpture, African mask from the Ivory Coast. This is actually a chocolate sculpture that I acquired recently in Paris with a, the sculpture of this went to the Musee du quai Branly in Paris and did research on different French colonies in the kind of collections there, and wanted to make these masks into chocolate. And when I went into the store, I was of course horrified and I, all I could think about was the slavery in the cocoa industry, let alone any other industry, tobacco industry, in Africa, and the direct connexion to that and why they're making this into chocolate, it's the same ways in which we have the sugar fields, you know, here in Queensland etcetera, people from the Pacific coming, of course all of the, you know, complex stories around that, and that for me directly relates to slavery. Because in Africa, in Haiti, you know etcetera, it's called slavery, here it's called domestic servants. So I think that this kind of connexion to your country, and what you're actually doing to commit yourself to you country, is a very interesting thing for Aboriginal servicemen and women to want to get away as well. So they're stuck on reserves, if they can pass as being Maori or even Celtic or something else, next thing you know they're fighting for their country. You know they're doing it in a way which is very different to the ways in which they, you know, that they've been designed to, as part of the colonial project.
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One thing I just want to talk about the shape of this sculpture, this one, this sculpture is called.
>> Harvest.
>> Hum>
>> Harvest. That's right, how could I forget that? Thanks Vincent, that's why I have curators here. And so, this particular sculpture is called Harvest, it's also made from Victorian Red Gum and also the charred legs as well. But the reason why it has the three pyramid forms here is that a lot of my work is of course around also collecting postcards, and historical postcards as well, that don't only represent of course indigenous Australians, it's this kind of international, global kind of collecting views of types of people of particular events in history, and so, for this one I was very much interested in the tourism photography that, you know, servicemen and women were doing, and of course in Cairo in the Pyramids, in the Giza Pyramids, and so I just kind of wanted to reference that. And so in some ways, there's this kind of subtle reference kind of mirroring of objects and histories with the sculptural forms as well. But I think that's all I'd like to say for now.
>> Okay, well thank you very much.
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>> You're welcome, thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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And I am unsurprised at the beautiful entry here of Professor Marcia Langton absolutely on time, I said before, when we started, that you were, we were willing you all here on time Marcia. I've already given your introduction to the audience but look thank, I know you've probably had a very bloody stressful afternoon and passage from the airport, but just so you know, Vincent led off in talking about the exhibition Sanctuary and the, we've looked at some of the objects in there, Brook has just taken us through some of the extraordinary things in his archive, but just by way of introduction, we've asked, I know that Professor Marcia Langton has been talking in particular to the War Memorial researchers in Canberra, and is keen to talk about a particular aspect of indigenous ANZACs, so I won't say anymore but the floor is yours Marcia, and you can do it from there or from the lectern, up to you.
>> If I could just sit here, could I?
>> Fine...
>> Yeah.
>> ...absolutely. Please give Marcia a welcome.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Thank you. Acknowledge the traditional owners, Wiradjuri people of the core nations, and their ancestors past and present. Can everyone hear me?
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. My apologies, so.
>> Do you want a glass of water?
>> I'm fine.
>> All right.
>> Fine thanks. So there's a context to Brook's exhibition, so I had a look at the National Archives and, you know you can do it yourself, you just go onto the National Archives' website and immediately, if you look for Aboriginal Infantrymen in World War I, you find that there are 400 identified recorded, or even more than 400, but at least 400 identified recorded Aboriginal Infantrymen who served. Moreover, as you know there are a number of Light Brigades, you know the magnificent Waler Horse contingents, the stablemen and handlers were often Aboriginal men. And that's because they came, like other Australians, from all the stations and country towns, and Aboriginal people at that time were employed in the pastoral industry, were wonderful workers with horses, cattle, sheep, and this history went unacknowledged for a very long time as you know. But, I think it's very important to acknowledge the numbers, their role, and I'm in huge admiration of the War Memorial and the National Archives for the work that they've done in identifying as many as they have been able to identify. And, you know, there are stories from many families about these men and some of you will know already from the NITV documentaries that the Lovett family in Victoria has had men serve in every war, including several in the First World War, and there are families of Aboriginal and Torres Strait and the people around the country, who can make that claim or can point to their forebears who served in various wars. So I think what's important about all of this in the context of Brook's exhibition is that we need to look at the times. So of course the first Light Brigade gets to, you know, the theatres of war in about 1917 I believe, I think 1917 is the centenary of the Light Brigade and, so can you imagine Aboriginal men turning up at the recruiting desks at that time when, in every jurisdiction, it was illegal for Aboriginal people to serve in the Defence Forces. Yet they were recruited, and when they came home of course, it was a shock to them to find that, if they got home, that they returned to the life that they left, and that was one of decimation. So, I've been asked many times why did they serve? Well, I think the reasons are the same for them as they are for every other Australian, that, you know, we know from the letters and the diaries that people wanted to serve their country, they wanted adventure, their friends were doing it, they didn't want to be left behind, they didn't want to be seen not to have served their country. But why would Aboriginal people, and remember at this time, you still have violent frontiers in Australia. So, a few years ago, just next door really, there was an exhibition called Blood on the Spinifex by Kimberley artists, and that exhibition was the first of a series of exhibitions and performances in which these elders from the Kimberley recorded in visual design and song and dance performance, the massacres that were occurring in the Kimberley. And the late Patty Bedford said for instance that, he knew that some massacres occurred during the First World War because of the marching and the music. And, you know, he demonstrated it for people, to show them what it looked like and what it sounded like. And that's how he placed the timing, the time of the massacre, not being numerate, and, so here we have men coming from violent conflicts in Australia, to serve the country that's suppressing them in another part of the world.
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[ Silence ]
^M00:37:20
Perhaps they did not entirely understand what they were caught up in. perhaps, you know, going to the desk and signing and knowing that you were going to go travelling was a way of escaping what was happening at home. But in other instances, say here in Victoria, the worst of the frontiers had already occurred quite some time beforehand so, these were, this was not the case for here in Victoria but it was still the case in Queensland, and there were a very large number of Queenslanders who served, so it wasn't until, you know, after 1910, probably ending by 1925, that the native mounted police were disarmed. But still, even so, I have to say that it was quite late in the 20th century when a contingent of native mounted police came, were sent from Fraser Island, well they were Fraser Islanders, from Queensland to Victoria, and put in the police paddocks here. So I wanted to ask you Brook, there's one photograph of a native mounted police, yeah? And I'd like to know what we know about that photo because I looked at it and thought it looks like the Victorian police paddock.
>> No he's from New South Wales.
>> Is he?
>> Yeah.
>> Whereabouts in New South Wales?
>> It just says New South Wales.
>> Uh-huh.
>> So he may not be from New South Wales but.
>> Yeah.
>> So.
>> So there were native mounted police in New South Wales and in Queensland.
>> Yeah.
>> And I know the Queensland native police, mounted police, weren't fully disarmed until, you know, quite late really in our 20th century history. And then this contingent from Fraser Island was sent down here to the Victorian police paddock, and you'll remember the Sidney Nolan paintings. Oh, I used to study under them at the old ANU library. The Black Trackers, who tracked Ned Kelly, and assisted in his eventual capture, were those very same Fraser Islander native mounted police. So, you know, it's very recent in our history.
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So, isn't it ironic that, on the one hand we have native mounted police who are tasked with controlling and shooting Aboriginal people. We have, you know, people fleeing the violent frontiers in Australia, and yet we have, you know, at least 400 Infantrymen serving in the First World War. So.
>> Marcia can I pick up on that point, is it 400, I mean some reports you see, we see 400 to a thousand, what?
>> Well this is why I say identified and recorded 400 because that's what the National Archives' records tell us.
>> Right.
>> There of course are going to be many more, but.
>> And what do we know of who came home?
>> Well not a lot. There are files. The reason why we know about this 400 is because the archivists have gone through each of the files, and I mean I haven't had time to look at 400 files. But, you know, if the rate of death is the same as for he other Australians servings it's, you know, one in four.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
>> To bring this back to Brooks' exhibition, and of course is, what is it, Tomb of Outcasts.
>> Tombs of the Outcasts.
>> And Marcia you have to, it seems to me there was a double dispossession of those indigenous men who served and came home. It was a question, to what did they come home? And, now there had been, as I said in my introduction, a rough equality as they served, would you agree with that?
>> Yes.
>> They were paid equal, they had equal pay.
>> Equal pay.
>> Right?
>> They were paid equally.
>> But I gather a lot didn't get their final pay or their final entitlements.
>> That's correct.
>> And they did not get soldiers' settlement blocks.
>> That's right.
>> In fact those that were would have been taken from their families, would that be right?
>> Yeah.
>> So double dispossession.
>> Yes, that's right, all of that.
>> Yeah. And then if you think of the sadness then of sadness then of what happened through the 20s, many of the soldiers who, you know, went onto those blocks anyway, had miserable lives because they were broken men. So there's layers and layers I guess of the social outcasts from that terrible conflict.
>> Um-hum.
>> Marcia do you think there, I mean was there, it's almost a naïve question but it seems there was a moment there when perhaps our history might have been different with those men returning. But then again, if one looks at the other, the rest of the history, you know Hughes, is it Versailles arguing against full participation by the Japanese so there's the racist elements there with those in the regions, I...
>> Well.
>> ...guess is this question, could, you know, could it have been other in, as the 20s went on?
>> Well I think it, there were many outcomes. I don't think there's one single outcome. So for instance, if you look at the record of the Lovett family, I mean almost in every generation you have Lovett men serving for, you know King and country right? So, they come home from World War I, and then, their descendants go and serve in World War II, and they serve in Vietnam and Korea, right? And Afghanistan. So, if the returning World War I Infantrymen from that family had been so disabused of the experience, perhaps there might have been a different outcome in the subsequent generations. But, you know, you find this throughout Australia, that there are, you know, families with, you know, records of distinction in serving in the Defence Forces, and of course women served as well, and Kath Walker was, you know Oodgeroo Noonuccal was one of the most famous of them. She was an ambulance driver I believe in Europe.
>> Just believe we leave the Lovetts, I love the story that I read there from, after the First World War they walked into the Green Vale Pub and asked for a drink, they were refused, so they shot up the place.
>> Um, yeah.
>> But they still served. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Yeah. And, and of course, they, many of them went on to become political leaders and reformers, right, in every generation, and that happened again after World War II as well. So, you know, some historians, particularly amateur historians who were very close to the groups in the Pilborough, say that, after they returned, not just from Defence Force service but also, you know service in the military camps in the Northern Territory and, you know, the kind of civilian forces, they were paid equally, they're demobbed, they go home, and they return to one shilling a week and tobacco and flour right, and tea.
>> What about the RSL's role in this?
>> Well what happened then was, that those men organised strikes across the country. And so every, you know, people who don't read history think that the Garinge [phonetic] strike was the only strike. There were strikes from 1946 onwards for more than 20 years across the rangelands organised by the men who returned from the Defence Forces of the Civilian Forces in World War II. And, not only that, there was a brief hiatus in the work of the Advancement Leagues, and immediately after World War II, they got going again, and, you know for instance, there was a wonderful Greek man who returned and married an Aboriginal woman, a Yorta Yorta woman, Mr. Jackomos, and all of his family became very famous campaigners, and then later on you have the Yorta Yorta claim you see? So, you know, the reverberation of those men who served in World War I goes on and on through the families. And the distinctive thing is that the, you know being paid equally and treated equally, in the Defence Forces is a big factor, because when they return home, slap in the face, no you're not going to be served, no you can't live in town, no you have to go back to the reserve, and you're back on one shilling a week and tobacco and...
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> ...tea and sugar.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
>> But were there no descending voices across the RSL leaders at the time about?
>> The RSL persistently misrepresented Aboriginal service right through until I went to the first, until about Mal Brough's time as Minister, when was that, about? When was John Howard elected, you know the answer to that?
>> Well, he was Prime Minster from 1996.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah?
>> That's right. So in that period is when there's official acknowledgement of the service of Aboriginal men and women.
>> Not until then.
>> And then, and that's when the RSL had to change their tune, and stop lying about the service of, because you know, you remember, what was his name, Ruckston always used to say, you know, white men fought for this country, you know? The Aborigines don't deserve everything, it was the white men who fought for this country. And you know all the Aboriginal families were devastated, and kept making petitions, continued to make petitions for memorials to the Aboriginal servicemen and women. But as I say, it wasn't unitl...
>> Yeah.
>> ...the 1990s,with Mal Brough, who served in Vietnam, and there were a lot of Aboriginal people who served in Vietnam, I mean I, you know, shared a house in my undergraduate days with returned Aboriginal servicemen. It was pretty wild. [Laughter] Well, you know, because as you say, men never return from war in good shape do they?
>> No.
>> And, you know, eventually the RSL had to tone it down, because actually the Defence Forces started doing the right thing. I think, yeah, I encountered the 51st Battalion in 1990 in North Queensland, they were coming along the road and I needed a lot of help. And I saw lots of black men and women on the trucks, in uniform. I thought, right, I'm going to try this on. So I went to their officer and asked for help, and they parked up their trucks and gave us enormous help for about two weeks. And the amazing thing was that there was an entire unit of black women in the 51st Battalion, and I had a huge women's' camp to feed, so those women, officers and servicewomen, got the food on, handed it out in the camps, they set up a clinic, and they were just, you know, brilliant role models for the women in the Bush because they were, you know, if you were in the Forces you have to run every day and stay fit. So they were disciplined, they were fit, they looked fabulous in their uniforms.
^M00:50:02
And, and then later on, of course, you know you have the establishment of NORFORCE after the Dibs' report. Am I being boring here, I'm going?
>> No, no, no, we'll come out to the audience soon but no.
>> So the, NORFORCE then had Aboriginal Reservists, and they recruited from, them from across the top end, and when I got around to taking students from here to Arnhem Land, with our GAMA classes, they saw black Reservists in the Bush, fit, putting up tents, running clinics, and they'd been told that, you know, all Aborigines were mad lefties and hated war and, you know, world peace and harmony, this is coming from a hunting and gathering society mind you. With warrior societies and all. So they see the black Reservists and I had, it hadn't occurred to me that this was shocking to them. Who are they, why are they in uniform? So, you know, it was quite a.
>> And to flip that, and we discussed this a few weeks ago, it's interesting, Gough Whitlam's biographer Jenny Hocking, has referred to a seminal moment in Gough Whitlam's politicisation in terms of black issues, and it's when he was serving in Darwin at the outbreak of the war, and it's the first time that he meets indigenous men and women and is, becomes aware of the extraordinary level of discrimination.
>> There was a series of airfields across North Australia, and I talked to him once about this, so yeah he was in the Air Force and so, you know Darwin of course, but then there were other airfields. And each of them are named after World War II pilots who went down actually, which is how Gove got its name. There was one at Lockhart River, and Whitlam actually landed in most of those airfields, and he landed at Gove, and there's actually a photograph of him holding Gullaroy Yunupingu as an infant.
>> Is there really?
>> Yeah.
>> Oh.
>> Yeah.
>> Oh, God. I'm going to come out to the audience in one minute but I just want to come back, if you can wing back to these extraordinary objects that Brook and Vincent and this exhibition, the breastplate. Now, we've got a date there, we've got a name there, what are we to make of this though, that the conquerors, in this case the white settlers, who have murdered local families, what, present this to whoever is left, what do we make of what has happened there? And why this is, you know, what do we know about it or what can we surmise?
>> I mean of course there were different stories around why the, you know these people were given them but, you know, they were mainly king and queen plates, so they were kind of going to representatives of leaders of those places. And, you know I think that, you know some people wore them very proudly, like I was, you know, beforehand we were having a conversation, I have a postcard of a Aboriginal woman, she must have been about 65, 70, and it says in her Sunday best, and of course it was one of these postcards that we're looking at types but, you know, she's holding an umbrellas in the sun and has her, you know, her flowered, you know, mission frock, but she's wearing her breastplate with pride. And of course, you know, some people also talk about, you know, the people doing, you know, the Aboriginal people.
>> Why would the gesture have been made, is it, you know, is it the conquering, you know, the conquers saying, you know, this is an acknowledgement that this happened, that you put up a fight, what?
>> Well I mean I think it was kind of seen as a trophy, and also an acknowledgement of a king or a queen. I mean I think that there are very loose, almost patronising, you know, a bestowment of, you know, something that, you know, it makes you a very important person. But I think it would have been mixed feelings depending on the situation.
>> Absolutely. Okay.
>> It was also the.
>> What, yeah.
>> ...celebration of a Chieftainship.
>> Yeah.
>> So the British were used to doing business in, you know, with the Maharaja in India and with the, you know, the Chiefs in Africa, and there was no evident, clear-cut hierarchy in native societies here, so they created a Chieftainship with these georgettes. And, in order to call the group together for an annual census and distribute blankets, that was one of the reasons. And of course, you know, Brooks is not wrong, all of that is, you know, part of the situation as well.
>> And also those georgettes were used for the, with, by the military weren't they as well, the British military.
>> Well yeah of course, yes they, the military insignia.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, yeah. Okay, let me come out to the audience. Who would like to lead off questions? Yes, Margaret.
>> Well.
>> Coming down here, here we go.
>> Ah, thank you. It's only just recently, of recent years, I can't remember precisely the date, we've actually got a women's memorial at our war memorial, I was there for the inauguration of it which was absolutely wonderful. And tonight, and I've taken intensive interest in Aboriginal, I called them indigenous Australian citizens, I'm not sure if that's offensive, people's affairs, so particularly since the Wave Hill fundraise and so on right, and protesting and all that sort of activity. But this is the first time that I have heard of Aboriginal women, servicewomen, tonight, and so now I'm wondering what proportion the National Archives have actually been able to ID and so on what, I, you've given one name that's all.
>> Yeah well I can't really tell you, but there were numbers of them. They weren't all in the Defence Forces, many were in the, you know, the Civilian Forces. There were, you know you can do a number of things, you can go into the National Archives' website.
>> Yeah.
>> And, you know, they're, you know, well-documented. You can also go into the War Memorial photographic collection through Trove, and there are photographs of women working in those military camps, you know outside of Darwin, and they, you know, butchered meat for instance.
>> Oh right, yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Thank you very much.
>> Yeah. Yes, anyone else?
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I was just going to come back and this question of suitable memorials, Vincent what's your view on this, at the war memorial in Canberra? Should there be a dedicated monument?
>> I think there should be. I know that Tony Albert's, and you referred to Tony Albert's monument in Hyde Park.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is not too far from the ANZAC memorial in Hyde Park but, that sits within, you know that's been commissioned by a particular city, even though that memorial is meant to be, represents more broadly. But, you know I think the avenue that leads to the memorial and the war memorial itself, should acknowledge that indigenous servicemen and women did, and there is that question that's been raised this evening, is to why would you go when you're not recognised as a citizen, you get back and your life hasn't really changed. But, so I do think that, in the sort of broader context of the way that Australia has dealt with indigenous issues, and with, well hasn't, probably hasn't dealt with the frontier wars but, this is part of that process I think, and I think it should be a dual acknowledgement.
>> What's your view on that?
>> Yeah well it's the visibility. I think that all countries tell their stories and their histories and it's arguably through, especially in western nations, through monuments that are often Greco-Roman inspired through the years you know and, I mean I, I mean when we talk about a memorial, I often think about well what is an indigenous memorial? And when we look at the Mole Creek Massacre memorial it's a stone, it's, you know, about five foot high and people come and visit there every year to commemorate, this is both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. And, you know I, and some people in communities in Africa have, you know, they plant forests to commemorate, and then of course you've got the Renaissance monument in Africa which is this humongous, you know, North Korean built monstrosity that, you know, divides the community. I mean I think within Australia it's like saying, well why don't we have a national indigenous, you know, cultural and central art gallery or something like that you know? I think definitely we need many of these different things because well then how do we represent all the different aspects of Australia?
>> Okay. And, any other? Well I just might, sorry James, did you? No? I saw. Yes. Get the microphone down here to James, thanks Lucy.
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>> Thanks Lucy.
^M01:00:11
I, my question is directed to Brook, I'm fascinated by your personal archive, and it seems to me that your exhibition is revealing a number of interesting aspects of the colonialism in Australia and that colonising project and I think that's very fascinating. It seems to me that collections of museums and things like that is often critiqued as being part of the colonising process itself, and I wondered whether your exhibition comments on that, or critiques that idea as well, and whether you have any thoughts about that aspect?
>> Sure. I think that the first reason why I started to collect is because I could do things with these objects that, when I'm working with collections, museums wouldn't allow me to do. Like light sensitivity, putting different materials on top of each other, access to them, actually borrowing them for a particular period, so it was really just about how I could, you know, be quite free with the archive. And, you know I think that often objects within, you know, collections, you know state or, you know kind of government and public collections, are often fixed within a particular narrative or a particular department as well, which defines quite narrowly what that object is, what it means, when it's shown, how it's shown, its collective source. And so, I suppose that, with my own archive, I kind of hope for different possibilities, so I'll juxtapose, of course deliberately, particular objects but, you know, I think that the viewer then sees it through chance as well, or through their own, you know, personal histories or what they pull out of it themselves. And so, when I do get to work with collections, like the university and museum collections, I can juxtapose my own collections next to those collections. So in saying that, it's really kind of connecting, I've always had this desire to connect Australia to international events. I find that, when we work within a bubble, we're kind of caught within a particular narrative or a particular history here. And especially ideas of primitivism or authenticity or anthropology, you know, I'm talking about traditional anthropology, you know i.e. the collection of, you know, human remains etcetera, dissemination of those bodies to, you know, represent the last, you know, authentic Aborigine, these kind of narratives. You know to try and, I suppose, blur those boundaries or to kind of make connexions elsewhere that's, I think, I'm hoping that the archive does so, just briefly, when I worked with the Reina Sofia in Madrid last year, I worked with their collection and the Anthropological Museum collection there, and also the Museum of America collection there, and I connected kind of, you know, not only Australian kind of colonial material but the Spanish colonial material. And that kind of helped them, or the people I spoke to anyway, unpack their own colonial history. Because they were so scarred by Franco, they kind of forgot, or didn't want to engage with their own colonial legacy, also because they lost their colonies and so it was seen as a dark period for them. So it was an opportunity to show, you know, the Australian context in an international view, do you know, that kind of helped changed the statement nation, I mean the statement kind of narrative. I hope that answers your question.
>> Yeah. I think that actually is a very nice way of coming back to what Vincent said right at the beginning, that this exhibition, Sanctuary, which we hope you see, will see if you haven't already next door at the Potter, is about clusters of meaning, I thought that was a nice phrase that you used about that. So look, this does bring us to the end of this lecture, would you please show your appreciation for Marcia Langton, Brook Andrew [Applause] and Vincent Alessi.
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[ Applause ]
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And we hope, if I can just mention the next in this series is called The Technical Advance, and that might sound a little dry but I got to tell you, we're bringing together a collection of physicists, chemists and engineers, who will talk about what, the role that critical scientists played during World War I, and of course the science that went on in spite of the war. I can assure you it will be a fascinating discussion, it's on on Thursday, the 11th of June at 6:30, and that one is at the Melbourne Museum, over at the Museum, 11th of June. So please register, we've got it up there, go onto events. But look, thank you so much for your attendance here tonight and hope to see you at future lectures, thank you.
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[ Applause and Music ]
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